Aftermath: Too Little, Too Soon

Peter Garrison

Monday, January 20, 2014 at 11:28 PM ET

Verified

Key Takeaways:

An inexperienced pilot stalled and crashed during a landing approach due to failing to maintain adequate airspeed, despite earlier NTSB reports possibly overstating the role of gusty crosswinds.
The pilot's final approach was significantly slower than recommended (20 knots slower than his previous landing), leading to a critical loss of speed and descent below the glideslope.
The accident highlights the common pilot tendency to instinctively pull back to regain altitude when encountering a loss of lift or downdraft, which is the incorrect and dangerous reaction when already at low airspeed.
Improper pattern technique, specifically an extended final approach, may have compounded the pilot's difficulties in maintaining safe speed and altitude.

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It was an old story. A relatively inexperienced pilot practicing landings got too slow on final approach, stalled and crashed.

The pilot, 56, was flying a club Cherokee 180, a type in which he had logged 13 of his 130 hours. He was making a short round-robin cross-country flight, ostensibly for practice, with landings at two airports along the way. He had landed at the second of them, taxied back and was making a second approach to Runway 17 when the accident occurred.